"What a dismal day, Miss!" remarked my maid, as she made herself busy in removing my breakfast from the table. "How shall you manage to amuse yourself?" "I don't mind the rain in the least," I answered, wheeling my admired chair up to the window, and throwing myself into it, with a lapful of books and work. "I think a rainy day is splendid." And so, indeed, I found it for a while. I read till I had extracted all the honey from the pile of reviews and magazines before me, and then pushed them away, and leaning against the window, gazed out on the dreary landscape. A sheet of rain and mist hid the lake, the pine grove looked black and sullen, the trees in the park tossed mournfully about their naked branches, as showers of yellow leaves fell in gusts upon the ground; the wind moaned dismally around the house, and dashed the rain, by fits and starts, against the windows with a heavy sound. It was very nice to feel that it could not get in, and that there was stout glass and stone between me and the pitiless autumn storm, and a snug and cosy shelter from its fury. But by and by I grew rather tired of watching the rain and the leaves, and yawning, began to cast about for some more attractive occupation. This I found for a short time in my worsted work, which I disinterred from the depths of my trunk, and applied myself to in great earnest for half an hour. But the motive for exertion was wanting; I could not help thinking wearily, that there was not the least hurry about finishing it, and those roses would blow, on demand, any time during the next six years, with as much advantage as at present. And so I laid it down and took to the window again, wondering, with a sigh, whether all young ladyhood were like this; and if it were, how it happened that we did not hear of more early deaths--deaths from utter ennui and exhaustion. I had for so long been used to having every half hour in the day filled up with some unavoidable exercise of mind or body, that I felt entirely lost without the routine, and firmly resolved, as soon as I should be settled at my aunt's, to begin a course of study which should fill up all these idle moments, and give some vigor to my faculties. "I should die of this in a month," I thought; and seizing one of the rejected Reviews, the only literature at hand, I resolutely set myself to read the longest, driest paper in it. And really, after the task was accomplished, though I am sorry to say I was not by much the clearer in my views on the particular branch of science of which it treated, still I felt decidedly better satisfied with myself for the effort, and experienced less compunction in taking, after lunch, a short nap.